A Tyrant Achieves Room Temperature

This will be a very difficult post to read, but I must write it.

The most awful thing about abusers is that they often project an image of caring, loving, and compassion. Too many of them wrap this image in a religious cloak. The phoniness continues until someone calls them out and exposes their abuse to the public and stands against them.

I am that exposer in this instance.

On December 14, Douglas Woodall died. I’ve left his obituary below. It nauseated me to read. Here is the truth about this man.

Doug Woodall was an ecclesiastical thug. He was an angry and violent man who used his power to both feather his own nest AND lash out at those in need and those who dared to challenge his narrow and limited thinking.

He was my endorsing bishop from 1995 until 2004. In 1997, he required the active duty chaplains turn in their TDY money since her was “providing their meals” during the annual conference (he didn’t). In 1998, I was in the middle of a divorce and was tapped out financially. Woodall threatened to pull my endorsement unless I “tithed” my full amount to him. In 2002, Woodall scheduled a visit to my MP unit in Fort Leonard Wood. He told me to approach my commander to get him made an “honorary MP”, which was refused by the general as “the oddest request I’ve ever received”. In 2003, he told me I could only get remarried if HE approved of the lady. In 2004, when I began dating my second wife, he told me to have my diocesan bishop approach the HOB for “permission” to marry. When they refused, he blamed me for not keeping him “in the loop” even though he received every email involved. Then he said he would go back to the HOB but only if I would stay with him “no matter what they said”. When I told him that wasn’t satisfactory, he said in an email that I never should have been ordained in the first place. When I found a new endorsing agent that would permit me to marry, he pulled my endorsement, leaving me in danger of losing my career. Later when I told him I wasn’t interested in having a relationship with him personally, he accused me of violating scripture and reprised his attack on my ordination.

This is just my experience. It does not include the stories I heard from others who received nasty professional references and attempts to sink the ministries of other capable priests.

What is the worst part of this man? Over the past fifteen years, he has projected this image of a “loving” and “caring” man of God. It fooled many.

His “doctorate in theology” was another item he would push to try to assert that he was theologically trained. His doctorate was honorary…and he never completed a dissertation.

Douglas Woodall is and always will be a phony, a fake, and a bully.

Am I angry with him? Not anymore. I’ve worked through the wounds he gave me. But I want to give voice to those individuals and families that he harmed over his professional life. Those victims deserve to have their stories told also.

I ask those of you who took the time to read this to do two important acts of prayer. First, pray for his victims. I know there are others out there…and I want them to heal as I have. Second, please pray for his family, especially his wife Pam. I always felt sorry for her in a compassionate way…and I believe there is more to her story than I was ever told.

One more note. For those of you who say that it is wrong to “speak ill of the dead” or that I am “being disloyal”. You don’t understand either the fullness of pain that a man like Doug Woodall can inflict on people OR you are in denial yourself. Jesus said the truth will set you free. He didn’t say it would be polite or easy…it just works.

I won’t be silenced.

https://www.milwardfuneral.com/obituaries/Douglas-Stephen-Woodall-Sr?obId=30134749

A Page is Turned

Photo by John Ray Ebora on Pexels.com

Despite the presence of e-books and e-readers, paper books remain a favorite. Touching the book does something to my learning and my Kindle simply cannot. Turning a page in a book feels more productive too. The denouement is at hand!

But not all page turns are satisfying. In fiction, the tragedy often comes near an advancement. Turning the page actually ushers in the terror or disaster. Remember that the suicides of Romeo and Juliet come immediately after we are privy of their marital bed!

We reached just such a point in Western government last week when the Prime Minister of Canada decided to take dictatorial power over the truckers of his nation that have had enough of the Covid-era restrictions on their lives. Instead of negotiating or even talking with the leaders of this protest movement, Trudeau unleashed the police on these peaceful protestors. In so doing, a Western “democracy” decided to wield the tyrannical military power of government against people seeking redress of their government through peaceful means.

The page was turned and the disaster appeared…

For the last 150 years, nations in the Western hemisphere inched their way from their roots in freedom, peace, and brotherhood towards the tyranny inherent in oppressive government. The Lincoln administration in 1861 had no problem beginning this era by marching an Army throughout the southern United States to suppress those states’ right to secede, murdering a million people in the process.

In it’s wake, individual municipalities and states used the law to suppress the citizenship rights of citizens born with the wrong skin color. Clubs, dogs, and fire hoses greeted those demanding the rights of citizenship guaranteed by the US Constitution.

In the 1990s, American citizens at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas were killed by federal agents for simply being advocates of their second amendment rights…and pursuing religious lives that seemed odd or strange.

And now, the violence of the State is unleashed on Canadian citizens because they are tired of their federal establishment oppressing them needlessly in the name of health protection.

What is next in this drama?

Citizenry in the West grow tired of government. In the United States, citizens have banded together locally in para-military groups to protect themselves from federal and state oppression as the courts and legislatures do nothing but feed the protected political classes from their constant taxing, regulating, and oppressing the Constitutional rights of the people. In Germany, England, and Sweden, people have ignored their governments as rapists and murderers receive protection in the name of “racial equality.” And in Canada, the truckers refuse to back down and are increasingly supported by the citizenry for their peaceful protests against government oppression.

It boils down to this. Either governments in the West up the level of violence necessary to enforce their tyranny or do nothing and watch their protected safe havens fall apart as the people demand justice and equality. And if they “shoot to kill,” civil war cannot be far behind.

Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail before that page is turned.

The Legacy of MLK

Decided this morning to journal my thoughts about this great man. I’m posting them here for your reading pleasure:

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MLK Day

MLK spoke out against injustice. He was a child of liberation theology and the great liberal theologians like Harnack, Schliermacher, and Rauschenbush. These men wanted to make the Kingdom of God more than the hereafter…they demanded justice now. MLK refused to accept the racial status quo in the south and challenged it publicly. Heavily influenced by Gandhi’s holistic and moral methods of non-violent resistance, MLK launched a movement within the civil rights movement that brought wholesale change in places where lynching and abuse of black-skinned people were a fact of life. It is right that America remembers his life.

Interesting that we do not remember Malcolm X in the same way. In many ways, Malcolm was more conservative politically than MLK. As time wore on, Martin became more interconnected with communist / socialist thought. He believed that socialism was a way to bring economic justice, which was wrong-headed. Malcolm asserted Black Nationalism…a belief that the Black Community needed to remove itself from White America and become wholly self-sufficient. He advocated arming black families with rifles and pistols – even forming black militias to protect black citizens from the Klan and other murderers. I align myself more politically with Malcolm, even though I am more spiritually and theologically aligned with MLK.

Those who came after these two great men however, have ransacked the movement. Jesse Jackson, a racist and con artist, has made himself and his family rich at the expense of America’s moral fabric. Al Sharpton is a charlatan par excellence. Both are anti-Semites and hate Whites. They are shakedown artists who are so shady that they defy description. Their corruption has robbed the movement of its moral center and reduced the great civil rights cause to a means to achieve financial freedom on the backs of the innocent.

These men are the champions of the New Racism. Terms like, “White privilege,” and, “institutional racism,” are their legacy. These are the attempts to reduce people whose skin is lighter colored then theirs to a morally inferior class. It’s no different than KKK or Jim Crow laws. It even exposes their racism, because they use their power in the media and Washington, DC to do harm to others simply because they come from different races…which dispels their notion that racism can only exist where a lack of power is present.

America needs what MLK called, “A Revolution of Values.” This means we must do more to embrace the spiritual nature of the American ideal. It’s simply to embody the great interpersonal and moral development embodied in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as we would want done to ourselves. On a personal level, we must rid our hearts of malice and hatred towards others and join hands with our fellow citizens to make our nation a better place to live. It begins with greater self-responsibility for the great privilege of being an American…our nation calls on us to make our communities great. On a social level, we must be a place of great compassion. This means embracing our neighbors and family members and helping them. Altruism never really comes in government programs. It’s best when we reach out our hands as individuals and families and associations.

MLK was a Christian pastor. He imperfectly embraced the Christian faith and its moral code. Sure, he was not a saint…his dalliances are well known, as are his many acts of plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation. But he believed in Jesus Christ, taught the Gospel, and believed in the Church as a place where the teachings of Jesus could be proclaimed and lived in community. All of these things are part of his legacy and call us to an active participation in his vision of the Kingdom of God as a visible reality NOW.

MLK is gone from us in the body. But his legacy is available for any to review and learn. As an American, I see in him a vision of our nation that hearkens to our Founders. As a Christ-follower, I see in him a way to make our Lord’s teaching of the Kingdom of God something that is both a coming hope AND a present trophy of the legacy found in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

 

 

The Paradox of Me and Us

We humans are an interesting bunch. Two qualities provide real psychic paradox that often leads us to a terrible quandary. The first of these is the need to be independent. Within the first year of life, humans begin the process of individuation from our mothers, fathers, and other caregivers. The second quality is our need to fit into a group. While we assert our individuality early on, we spend most of our lives developing that identity in community.

Adolescence and early adulthood bring these two competing principles together with the expected result of immense confusion. On the one hand, young people want to assert themselves as adults, exercising new powers granted them through rites of passage like graduation from high school. On the other hand, being accepted by peers remains critical of the developing self-understanding. Rejection by peers or lovers often shatters the world of a young person. Often this need for affirmation from peers reflects association with groups that engage in highly destructive behaviors like gangs.

Much of the conflict settles in its impact when humans create families. In one sense this is the creation of one’s own community – a spouse, children, a house. Contact with an external peer group, while important, takes on less importance. But one’s professional life often goes to the building and existence of larger group – institutions. Businesses carefully craft their identities as communities with statements on vision, values, goals, and ethics. Moving “up” often requires the individual worker embody the business, inculcating these values in a human incarnation of the culture.

Something happens in this paradox of individual and the institutions of life. For too many people in these institutions, the individual loses their identity within the group-think of the organization. Indeed, a person very often becomes little more than an appendage of the institution itself. In fact, this tendency to dehumanize people is a radicalizing mark of all groups. The individual must surrender more and more of their individuality to become part of the most inner circles.

A great example in business is what happened to Enron in the early 2000’s. As people began losing their individual identities, the care and development of the company became the raison d’être of the individual worker. Even while senior leaders were committing fraud and lying about assets on their financial reports, people simply overlooked the information and assumed everything was great. And the senior leaders – the President, CEO, and executive vice presidents – squashed anyone daring to question the talking points coming from the top. Often these truth-tellers were branded as disloyal, not team players, and losers. Such is the lot of people who tell the truth: No good deed goes unpunished.

Enron was destroyed by the all-too-human tendency to associate the institution with the individual, failing to understand they are not the same. The very people within the institution that were castigated and ridiculed had the power to save it. What a tragedy.

People within institutions that are the most loyal, hard-working, and invested in success can quickly become the most abusive and violent in defense of a sick organization. The organization is everything, and if we must sacrifice a few people along the way, then that’s just the way it goes. God forbid if these people go outside the institution and make waves! In such cases, people inside the institutions often target these prophets and truth-tellers for attack and annihilation.

The reality is that we must live in community to be fully human. We need human contact and interaction with our family, friends, and neighbors. But this tendency to lose ourselves in institutions and violate our individual values and ethics must be watched and protected.

America’s Religious and Spiritual Founding

Imagine you live in 18^th Century America. You are officially a part of the British Empire, living in one of the colonies.

The official religion of the British at that time was the Church of England – the Anglican Church. The new world has many other religious traditions behind it as well. One thing is certain, if you lived in the colonies in the 1700’s, you were Christian, Jewish, or Deist…atheists were few.

The state church had political power as well as the moral and spiritual force represented by its faith. Europe underwent a terrible time as various groups challenged the religious and political power of the Papacy. Very often a person’s allegiance to a particular doctrine or leader put him or her into conflict with their political leadership, usually a king or queen.

For this reason, the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention shared a bias: religion and government make bad partners organizationally. Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and the others didn’t want a particular religion controlling the mechanisms of a federal government. They believed in a very weak federal government, strong state government, and strongest local and personal government.

This explains why the first Congress passed a series of Constitutional amendments to enshrine religious liberty as a cornerstone of America. The First Amendment makes clear that, “…Congress shall make no law establishing a religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The purpose here was NEVER to push religion out of the public sector, but rather that the government and the various religious organizations would be neither married to the government nor banned by federal law.

Interestingly, this only applied to the federal government. At the time of passage, several of the states had an official connection to religious organizations: Massachusetts was Congregational, Virginia and most of the others were Anglican. But religious freedom in these places was impressive, especially in comparison with European states.

Our political leaders were deeply influenced by Judaeo-Christian ideals and philosophy. They are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Among these are the beliefs that human beings are the work of a Creator and that our rights come not from government, but from God. Washington was a leader in his local Anglican parish. Adams was a Unitarian Christian. James Madison attended the Episcopal church, even though he was highly critical of organized religion.

This is our founding, our history, and our political tradition.

The New Attorney General

So I’m driving back from Jefferson City today and heard the Sean Hannity show. Jamie Dupree does a regular commentary on his program and was sounding off on the Senate’s hearings with Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s designee to be the Attorney General of the United States. The discussion between Hannity and Dupree left me angry and appalled at what’s happening in Washington.

Dupree predicts that Lynch will fly through the confirmation process fairly easily. He suggests that up to 20 Republican Senators plan to vote for approve her nomination. If every Democrat votes for her, look for over sixty votes – a super majority – to support her.

The Republicans, especially Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions, exposed her fairly well over the past two days as a leftist radical with no respect for the Constitution. She is a political hack, willing to do the bidding of the President regardless of the moral or legal situation. She is, therefore, unqualified for this job.

In November, the American people spoke clearly about the Obama agenda for America: decidedly thumbs-down. Yet the Republican Party operatives in the Senate didn’t get that message.  No, they are trying to be “cooperative” and “work with” the President and the Democrats, trying to project an image that they are “proving that they can govern.” I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard the Republican establishment senators and congressional representatives say that the election meant, “The American people want us to work together.” No, No, a thousand times No!

For those not yet convinced, the American Republic is gone. We are now governed by those in power – an oligarchy of elitists who wield power without regard to the will of the people or the rule of law established foundational in the US Constitution. They are thugs, liars, and demagogues, who dismiss the people of this country and see us as pawns who need placating every two or four or six years, depending on the particular office in question. We are nothing to them.

Eventually America faces one of two destinies. Either the American people begin wielding their mass power at the ballot box and remove these elitists from office peacefully, or revolution is inevitable. In any case, this current debacle cannot continue.

The Declaration of Independence is quiet clear: government serves at the pleasure of the governed. And when government becomes tyrannical, it must be removed and replaced by a system more harmonious to the desires of the people. This principle should scare every politician of the Republican party who votes for this nominee, whose own words condemn her as unqualified for the job. That these same Senators are laughing while voting in favor should terrify the people…and help us realize what we must do to rescue our family and friends from the tyrannical Leviathan of the Federal Government.